We are thrilled to announce that another much-anticipated feature is now live in Snap Projections.
Financial Recommendations was created to automate the process of testing different optimization strategies in order to identify strong, practical and implementable client outcomes. From the beginning, priority was given to the following principles:
- Creating actionable and understandable recommendations
- Finding optimization opportunities in a relatively short amount of time
- Capturing meaningful client benefit across diverse planning situations
- Balancing optimization sophistication with real-world practicality
Importantly, the goal was not simply to produce mathematically perfect outcomes at any cost. Recommendations also needed to remain practical, explainable and implementable within real client relationships. A theoretically optimal strategy provides little value if clients are unlikely to follow or maintain it over time.
This new functionality will automatically calculate:
- Your client’s optimal CPP start age that maximizes estate after tax
- Your client’s optimal OAS start age that maximizes estate after tax
- Your client’s optimal taxable income target (level) that maximizes estate after tax
- Your client’s optimal TFSA contribution strategy that maximizes estate after tax
- Your client’s optimal withdrawal order (asset decumulation) that maximizes estate after tax
- Your client’s optimal contribution order (asset accumulation) that maximizes estate after tax
What client questions can Automated Financial Recommendations answer in real time?
Why we created Financial Recommendations
Snap could previously illustrate whether a client was projected to succeed financially through lifestyle trade-offs such as adjusting savings habits, retirement timing, or retirement spending goals. However, identifying the best financial path using a client’s existing assets, accounts, and government benefits was a manual process.
Advisors were often left testing numerous optimization strategies independently, adjusting CPP timing, OAS timing, withdrawal order, contribution order, taxable income targets, and TFSA funding approaches through repetitive trial-and-error modelling.
While this was fairly simple to do, it was not ideal for client meetings or time efficiency in general. Advisors know opportunities exist to improve outcomes, but identifying and demonstrating the optimal combination of strategies in real time is difficult.
This is why we created Financial Recommendations.
This new feature empowers Advisors to quickly identify actionable financial optimization opportunities that improve client outcomes without requiring lifestyle sacrifices.
Instead of simply showing projections, Advisors can now demonstrate how clients can improve their plan through practical, understandable, and implementable strategies.
Financial Recommendations helps Advisors quickly illustrate:
- Which optimization opportunities may improve client outcomes
- How much benefit selected strategies may provide
- What actions the client should take
- How recommended strategies compare against the client’s current approach
When Advisors can automatically apply recommended strategies into the projections with a single click, the result is faster planning, clearer advice, and more confident decision-making.
During testing, we found that relatively simple optimization strategies could materially reduce cumulative lifetime taxes and improve estate outcomes.
In certain client scenarios, these strategies improved outcomes by hundreds of thousands of dollars while also creating additional flexibility within the plan — including opportunities to increase retirement spending while still maintaining strong long-term financial sustainability.
What Advisors said about the need for Automated Financial Recommendations
Clients increasingly expect Advisors to provide personalized, proactive, and highly actionable financial advice. To support this expectation, Advisors need planning software that can identify optimization opportunities quickly, accurately, and consistently.
Within the context of Financial Recommendations, Advisors told us they want software that can automatically determine:
- Whether a better financial outcome may be possible
- Which optimization strategies are most effective
- Which actions the client should take
- How recommended strategies compare against what the client is doing today
What about other financial planning software that does something similar?
Advisors told us that many other solutions are falling short, for a variety of reasons:
- It takes too long to model all possible strategies and combinations
- It is difficult to identify every optimization opportunity relevant to a client
- It is difficult to model strategies consistently and accurately
- Existing software solutions often focus on isolated recommendations rather than evaluating how multiple strategies work together holistically
- Advisors are frequently left manually connecting strategies themselves through repetitive trial-and-error analysis
Advisors interviewed also emphasized that recommendations must remain practical, understandable and implementable within real client relationships.
Complex optimization strategies that rely on highly specific annual withdrawals or constantly changing calculations may produce marginally better outcomes mathematically, but they are often difficult for clients to understand and difficult for advisors to maintain over time.
Instead, Advisors want recommendations that are:
- Actionable
- Explainable
- Sustainable
- Easy for clients to follow
Examples of these optimization opportunities include:
- Adjusting government benefit timing
- Blending withdrawals between taxable and non-taxable sources
- Prioritizing TFSA top-up opportunities
- Accelerating registered withdrawals to improve long-term tax efficiency and estate outcomes
These are strategies clients can realistically implement and maintain over time.
Financial Recommendations allows Advisors to identify and present more optimization opportunities in less time and with less effort.
As a result, Advisors can spend more time delivering value through strategic discussions and less time performing manual trial-and-error analysis inside the software.
Advisor are invited to try this new feature
Canadian Financial Advisors, Planners, and Investment Managers are eligible to start a 14-day Free Trial of Snap Projections financial planning software.
